ESR - a major stakeholder in EU health policies
EU legislation could have a huge impact on medical imaging and healthcare, and the European Society of Radiology (ESR) is playing a key role in safeguarding radiologists and patients' interests. By closely monitoring EU affairs and establishing contacts with relevant institutions, as well as consulting and public affairs agencies, the ESR tries to draw the attention of relevant stakeholders and decision makers to the implications of proposed EU legislation.
First and foremost, the ESR co-founded the 'Alliance for MRI' in March 2007 to protect the future of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an essential modality in fighting life-threatening diseases such as brain tumours, cancers and heart conditions. The aim of the alliance is to ensure that the threat posed to the future of MRI by the EU Physical Agents 2004/40/EC (EMF) directive is averted and that patients in Europe will not be precluded from state-of-the-art healthcare services.
The alliance has already successfully influenced the postponement of the implementation deadline of the directive from April 2008 to April 2012 to allow more time for the evaluation of new data on electromagnetic fields (EMF) and their short-term effects on the human body.
The ESR is also monitoring the proposal for a directive on the application of patients' rights in cross-border healthcare, in order to put in place a specific instrument to ensure European citizens further legal certainty as to their rights when moving within the EU to get treatment. The aim of the directive is to make it easier for patients to obtain approval and to set an organised financial framework to pay for their treatment, but the ESR is concerned that it offers little to ensure quality of treatment or the safety of patients whose treatment involves cross-border eHealth.
The ESR has submitted responses to the EC Green Paper on the EU Workforce for Health and the EC Communication on telemedicine for the benefit of patients, healthcare systems and society. Other fields of action include the recast of the medical chapters included in EURATOM, the European Partnership for Action against Cancer, which was launched in September 2009 in Brussels, and many other issues of relevance.
At ECR 2010, a joint session of ESR and EC, introduced by Catalina Dima from the European Commission's information society directorate, will deal with the legal and technical challenges for radiology in regard to eHealth.
04.01.2010
